Tasting a new craft beer is always a journey into the unknown. But no brand embodies this more, symbolically and literally, than Vietnam-based brewery Heart of Darkness.
Since launching in 2016, the brand’s success has taken it into seven markets in Asia, including Hong Kong late last year – where it is exclusively distributed by Mosaic Craft Distribution.
Hong Kong’s craft beer scene is taking off, with more than 20 well-established local breweries – many of which were founded in the last five years – and new craft beer tap houses now opening nearly every month.
Heart of Darkness has rapidly picked up a following here. It is now sold in more than 30 outlets including some of Hong Kong’s most popular craft beer bars and top restaurants: The Roundhouse, Coedo Taproom, FAB, Metropolitan, French Flair, Chom Chom, Boilermaker, The Globe, Feather and Bone, 99 Bottles, Rula Bula, Momentai and Deliveroo Food Market.
“We’re constantly innovating,” Heart of Darkness owner Pemberton says. “We just want to keep on pushing it. We’re focused on creating premium craft beer while also exploring distinctive flavours and pushing the boundaries of what can be done. The reaction to this here so far has been phenomenal. The market is also growing fast, and we’re excited to be part of the future of craft in Hong Kong.”
The unusual flavours are one of the brand’s most distinct features.
“When we started, at that time everybody else was doing easy drinking, lighter session beers and in general the thought was the Vietnamese aren’t ready for big beers yet,” Pemberton recalls. “But if you look at Vietnamese cuisine, it’s bright, bold and vibrant, which is very similar to craft beer when done right.
“We said, ‘Let’s let the Vietnamese decide’, rather than tell them what to drink. My personal preference is big bold flavours. Our first beer, the 7.1 per cent Kurtz’s Insane IPA, was a big kickback against what everyone else was doing – if they’re doing low IBUs, let’s be as big and bold as we can. So we went 102 IBU, as bitter as you can possibly get.”
And so everything seems to have come full circle for Pemberton, an “old China hand” who quit his job working as general manager for a sourcing company on the mainland in 2012 to master home brewing.
From then on it was nothing but “study, research, brew” for six months as he became “completely obsessed”, until Ikea headhunted him and took him to Saigon, Vietnam in 2013, where he would eventually launch Heart of Darkness.
“To me this is like coming home, with Shenzhen just across the border,” the 50-year-old says. “My head office used to be down in Hung Hom – I spent a lot of time in Hong Kong and a lot of time travelling around China. It’s got a special place in my heart, and it’s nice to be able to come back and launch the brand here and share it with the town I love.”
Created with head brewer Duane Morton, the brewery aptly takes its name from Pemberton’s favourite book, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
The 1899 novella about a narrated voyage up the Congo River served as one of the inspirations of Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory 1980 Vietnam war masterpiece Apocalypse Now – which made it a natural fit.
“We wanted a name that would give us a loose link to Saigon, and Apocalypse Now is also my favourite film. So we decided on Heart of Darkness,” Pemberton says.
“Something punchy which people wouldn’t forget. It’s worked beautifully, because it’s such an unusual name.”
The name of each different beer also comes from Conrad’s book. “It gives us these wonderful names like ‘Futile Purpose’ and ‘Pitiless Folly’, which I love,” Pemberton says. “We wanted duality in the brand, because the book’s all about duality – the difference between life and death, sanity and insanity, good and evil. So we wanted fun vibrant beers, but dark heavy branding to get that duality going.”
Perhaps the most unusual flavour on tap is the Futile Purpose – a 4.8 per cent cucumber Pilsner – the idea for which came about on a “stinking hot day” when Pemberton was stuck driving alongside Morton through Ningbo, China in a car with no air con.
“Duane turned to me and said, ‘Oh mate, I could kill an ice-cold Pilsner right now’. I said, ‘How about an ice-cold cucumber Pilsner?’ Duane went back and came up with this crazy technique to make it,” Pemberton says. “It’s all 100 per cent natural – we put actual cucumbers in it, and the brewery team have to peel those cucumbers. It gives it that vibrant cucumber flavour.”
Morton, a Kiwi, joined Pemberton looking for a change of scenery after working in New Zealand breweries for six years. He is “constantly” experimenting with new flavours for special seasonal batches, and has “free reign” to get creative.
“The cucumber is probably the most unusual in the core range,” Morton says. “We still have the space to put unusual things on.
“We were walking down some of the steps in Hong Kong, through the market stalls, and something caught my nose. I was trying to pick out what it was and was imagining it in a beer.
“I’ve literally woken up twice in the middle of the night with something in my head and said, ‘Hey Google, remember this’. Often it’s to do with food, travelling in a region and trying different cuisines. There s a close link between good cuisine and good beer.”
But the brewery’s incredible beer label artwork designs catch the eye just as much as its distinctive, unusual flavours catch the taste buds.
“You’ll see the river running through everything – that’s about exploration, the journey,” Pemberton says. “Because we believe we’re taking our customers on a journey into our idea of craft beer and flavour.”
Each individual beer artwork label is based on the passage of the book from which the name comes.
The end result for Kurtz’ Insane IPA, their first label, by award-winning creative agency BBDO was inspired by an old woodcut cover of Conrad’s 1899 novella. “We saw it on Google and fell in love with it immediately, and spun everything else off from that,” Pemberton says.
“On the surface the marketing is fun and eye catching, we wanted to stand out. Everyone else was doing text. We always shoot in the opposite direction to everyone else. There’s hidden devices there in every label – skulls and scary things.”
The guys have made around 220 beers in the two years they have been around – and have no intention of slowing down. Aside from Hong Kong, the beer is also sold in Cambodia, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
The brewery has a total of 70 taps at its two Ho Chi Minh locations – Heart of Darkness Bar in District 1, and Kurtz’ Bar in District 2. A Heart of Darkness taproom is also slated to open in Singapore in April.
Moving to New York from China in 1988 as a terrified British ale drinker – and craft beer virgin – will seem like a lifetime ago for Pemberton.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s going to be Bud Light, Coors, Michelob – that’s not beer in my world.” Thankfully a friend reassured him on arrival by taking him to a beer shop from which they carried home two massive bags full of different craft beers, and Pemberton’s education – and new life – began.
“I put on 16 kilos and fell in love with craft beer,” he says, laughing. “I never looked back. I was a complete convert.”
And as much as his belly has grown, so has his business.
